Data source

All crime and stop-and-search data displayed on CrimeMapsUK is sourced from data.police.uk, the official open-data platform maintained by the Home Office. The data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

We collect two types of record:

We do not create, modify, or interpret police records. To place and scale the police data, we use two official ONS datasets: postcode locations, to place records in postcode areas, and Census 2021 resident counts, for records per 1,000 residents. We do not add composite scores or AI-generated analysis. The service reshapes published data so it can be searched, summarised, and compared - nothing more. District pages also show a few other official open datasets beside the crime figures, described under area data on district pages; they are shown as published and never combined with crime counts.

How data is collected

Data is loaded from the official monthly archive files on data.police.uk. Each archive file holds about three years of street-level crime and stop and search, in one file per force per month. A scheduled job checks for a new release twice a month:

  1. It asks data.police.uk for its latest published month. If that month is already loaded, it stops.
  2. Otherwise it downloads the archive file for that month and loads every month from the last loaded month up to the new one. It also reloads any earlier month where the archive now holds a force's street-crime file that the site lacks, so a force's late street-crime refresh is picked up.
  3. Each record is stored under the force whose file it came from, which is the force that reported it.
  4. If the newest archive file is not published yet, nothing is loaded until the next check. The data.police.uk street-crime API is not used instead, because it is searched by map area and cannot say which force reported a crime.
  5. Each month is replaced in a single database transaction together with every summary built from it, so a failed load leaves the previous records and summaries in place.

Forces publish stop and search separately from street crime, and not every force publishes it. In the archive files from December 2013 to August 2026, the Police Service of Northern Ireland published no stop and search, Greater Manchester Police published none after June 2019, and Gwent Police none after August 2023. North Yorkshire Police published none for October 2023 to June 2024, or after August 2025. Stop-and-search totals add up the forces whose month is loaded, so a month without one of those forces is not counted as that force's zero.

Deduplication

Each record is assigned a SHA-256 hash derived from all of its data fields, including the force it was downloaded for. A crime listed twice with the same Crime ID and the same details is counted once; this happens when two of the API's overlapping search areas both return it. Rows without an ID, such as anti-social behaviour and stop and search, are each kept, even when two rows match field for field, because the police file lists each incident separately. Each repeat of such a row gets its own hash. One exception applies to stop and search. Some forces' monthly files list every search two or three times over, in the archive and the API alike. When every search in a force's month appears a whole multiple of times, and that month holds at least 20 different searches, the repeat is removed: a file that lists every search three times counts each search once, and two genuinely identical searches in it still count twice. The API returns street crimes by area, not by force, so an API import labels each record with the force whose area was requested. Where two forces' request areas overlap, a record can be stored once under each force. Imports from the bulk archive take the force from the force's own file.

Each monthly import replaces the whole month, so loading the same month again gives the same records rather than adding copies.

Location data

Coordinates published by data.police.uk are not exact incident locations. Before publication, the Home Office snaps each coordinate to a nearby anonymous map point - typically the centre of a street or a local landmark. This means that multiple incidents may share the same published coordinate, and no individual address can be identified from the data.

Coordinates are stored using the WGS 84 coordinate reference system (SRID 4326). Where PostGIS is available, spatial indexes and geography columns are used for efficient radius and bounding-box queries. Where PostGIS is not available, the service falls back to bounding-box filtering with haversine distance calculations in Python.

Maps and hex grid summarisation

The interactive maps display crime and stop-and-search density using a hexagonal grid rather than showing individual incident markers. This approach protects the approximate nature of the location data and provides a clearer picture of geographic patterns.

Hex grids are pre-computed using the PostGIS ST_HexagonGrid function at three zoom levels for street crime, and the overview and detail levels for stop and search:

Each hexagon's colour shows its records per km² of ground in the selected month. That is its count divided by the area it covers, which we work out from its size and latitude. The bands are the same at every zoom level. The crime map's bands are under 5, 5–20, 20–80, 80–300 and 300+ records per km². Stop-and-search records are far fewer, so that map's bands are under 1, 1–5, 5–20, 20–80 and 80+. We picked both from the spread of published records in recent months, so the national and street views both show differences. A large hexagon and the smaller ones inside it take about the same colour where records are plentiful and spread evenly, and a busy street inside a quiet large hexagon reads darker once you zoom in. Zoomed in, a hexagon covers about 0.06 to 0.08 km² in England and Wales, so a single record there is about 12 to 16 per km². That puts it in the crime map's second band and the stop-and-search map's middle band, so a quiet place can read a shade or two darker zoomed in than zoomed out. The colours are not a safety rating or a rate per resident. Clicking a hexagon shows its area and its records per km².

For each hexagon, incidents are classified by their published outcome. Street crime outcomes are grouped into police-recorded action (such as a charge, caution, or penalty notice), local resolution, and other or unresolved (such as no suspect identified or investigation incomplete). Stop-and-search outcomes are grouped into find or arrest, other action taken, and nothing found.

Website outcome summaries include anti-social behaviour among records with no outcome. The PDF outcome mix leaves it out because police publish no outcome for it.

Hex summaries are rebuilt automatically after each monthly data ingest.

Dashboard calculations

Dashboards present grouped totals, rates, and comparisons calculated directly from stored records. Available filters vary by dashboard but typically include police force, time period, crime category, and age range.

Dashboard pages and their filter metadata are cached, normally for 15 minutes each. An update can take longer to appear while those caches refresh or while derived tables are rebuilt. The coverage dates on each page show which data is loaded.

Neighbourhood reports

Neighbourhood PDF reports are scoped to a postcode and a fixed search radius. The report process works as follows:

  1. The postcode is geocoded to a latitude and longitude representing the postcode centroid.
  2. A search radius of 0.5 kilometres is applied (stored as 0.31 miles, so the crime search reaches about 499 metres). All street crime records with published coordinates within this radius are selected. The radius query uses PostGIS ST_DWithin on geography columns for accurate distance measurement, with a bounding-box pre-filter for efficiency.
  3. The search radius is fixed at 0.5 km for every neighbourhood report. The time window depends on the product: 12 months for the 12-month report, or 60 months for the 5-year report (including prepaid pack vouchers), and 120 months for the Move report.
  4. Selected crimes are aggregated by category, month, outcome status, and location. The report includes a breakdown of crime types, a month-by-month trend, the most frequently occurring locations, and an outcome resolution rate.
  5. Local crime category shares are compared against the wider police force area and against England and Wales as a whole. The national benchmark is built from the published dataset itself: the published incidents of the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales for the same month window as the report.
  6. The report includes a static density map showing where published incidents are concentrated within the search radius, with the 0.5 km boundary drawn on the map. It does not use exact-looking incident pins.
  7. A wider-area page gives the records per 1,000 residents for the postcode's whole sector and district, and the district's deprivation mix, with the same window and the same rules as those areas' pages. An area appears only when its page is published, and a rate its page withholds is withheld in the report too, with the reason. The page appears only when Census 2021 resident data is loaded and the site publishes a page for the postcode's sector or district. Without census data it is left out, even where those area pages exist. Without deprivation data, or without a published district page, the page has no deprivation mix.

Reports that chart more than one year follow these rules. They matter most in the Move report, which covers 120 months.

A free postcode check opens a result page for the same 0.5 km circle and the 12-month report's window. It shows each category's share of the circle's records beside its share for the force that published most of them and for England and Wales in the same months, using the method below. It compares the 12 months with the 12 before them only when every force with records in the circle in either year published every month of both years. Below 50 records it gives no category or outcome shares and no percentage change, and below 1,000 it says a change of a few percent can be chance. Its map groups records into hexagons about 475 m across, so on a 0.5 km circle it shows at most seven parts of the circle, and it shows no map below 10 records. Under the hexagons is an OpenStreetMap street map that our server draws from cached map tiles. A month that a force with records in the circle did not publish is marked as missing, or as partly published with that force named, and never drawn as zero. Outcomes are shown as published, and can change later. The page shows no rate for the circle, for the reason given under records per 1,000 residents. It shows the published rates of the postcode's sector and district instead, labelled as theirs, and withholds each one wherever that area's page withholds it.

Every report documents its postcode, search radius, time window, and the comparison method used, so readers can assess exactly what area and period the figures cover. For a walkthrough, see How to read a neighbourhood report.

National comparison method

National comparisons appear in neighbourhood reports, where the local area is benchmarked against England and Wales, on postcode district and council area pages, beside each top category, and in a district page's "Is it safe?" section. The benchmark uses the published dataset itself: the published incidents of the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales for the same month window as the report. British Transport Police records, which cover railways in England, Wales and Scotland, and any Northern Ireland records are left out. If no same-window national aggregates are available, the report omits the England and Wales comparison and says so - we do not substitute figures from another source.

Category-mix benchmarking compares the share of each crime type in the local area against the share nationally. For example, if violent crime makes up 35% of local incidents but 28% nationally, that difference is reported as a percentage-point deviation. This method compares the composition of crime rather than the absolute volume.

Police-area comparison follows the same method but uses the full set of published incidents for the relevant constabulary in the same time window as the baseline. Postcode result pages use the same national and police-area shares.

On a postcode district or council area page, each top category shows its share of the area's records beside its share across the same 43 forces over the same 12 months, and the comparison is left out when the area's own 12 months have a gap. The month-by-month chart hatches a month with no records here because the forces publishing there did not publish it, rather than drawing it as zero. A month that only some of those forces published keeps its count, even when that count is zero, is drawn striped, and names the force that did not publish.

On a postcode district page, the "Is it safe?" section compares the share of the district's largest crime category with that category's share across the same 43 forces over the same 12 months. It also sets the district's change on the previous 12 months beside the change for its main force, the force that published most of its records, over the same 24 months. The force comparison needs all 24 of the force's months. Both comparisons are left out when the district's own 12 months have a gap, because they would then cover a month the district does not. The section gives no verdict on the place.

Important limitations

The source data has known limitations. We document these rather than hiding them.

Force area pages

Indexable place pages such as Crime in London use the same monthly force rollups as the dashboards. The public URL may use a familiar city name, but the figures remain police-force totals - not city-council or postcode boundaries. For a council's own area, see the council area pages below. Browse the full list at crime by police force area.

Publication gaps

Some forces pause or severely reduce street-level publishing on data.police.uk. When recent twelve-month volume falls below 15% of that force's highest earlier twelve-month stretch, CrimeMapsUK treats the series as a publication gap rather than a genuinely quiet area. District pages and report sales apply the same volume rule to their own records: a district whose own records show a gap gets no page, and a report is not sold for a search circle whose records show a gap. This rule does not establish that every force is publishing completely. Separately, a force that data.police.uk lists as publishing no street-level crime, currently Greater Manchester Police, gets a force page that explains the gap and shows no figures until street crime is loaded for each of the site's latest three months. A postcode district with most of its postcodes in that force gets a short note instead of a page, kept out of search results, that links to the force page. A district with at least a tenth of its postcodes there, but not most, keeps its page; the page says its figures leave that part out and shows no rate per resident, because the records would cover only part of the residents counted. For background and worked examples, see when police forces stop publishing street-level crime data.

Our loaded data has no street-level records from the forces below for the months shown, out of the last 120 published months, the 10 years the longest report covers. A month can be missing because the force did not publish it or because we have not loaded it. The data.police.uk changelog records the months forces did not supply. The list updates after each fortnightly data load. A force that published nothing in a report's latest 12 months is left out of that whole report, and the report names it. For any other force, a report that covers one of these months shows it as unavailable, not as zero, and gives no trend comparison across it.

Postcode district pages

Pages such as those listed under crime by postcode district group published records by postcode district (the first half of a postcode, like E8 or LS2). Because published records carry an approximate map point rather than a postcode, each record is assigned to the district of its nearest postcode centroid, using free ONS postcode data. Near district boundaries this assignment is indicative rather than exact. Districts with very few recent records, or whose own records show a publication gap, do not get a page: a page built on paused data would show a false picture of the area. A district is labelled with its postcode area, such as the CM (Chelmsford) postcode area: that is Royal Mail's name for the postcode area, not a town boundary, so a CM district need not be in Chelmsford itself. Once a district's sector records add up to its district total for every month, its page names each force that published its records with that force's share, and says what share names no force; a force page lists the districts where it published more than half the records.

District, sector, council area, and force pages open with a one-paragraph summary of the figures below it: the published records, the months they cover, and the rate per 1,000 residents where the page shows one. The change against the previous 12 months, in that summary and on the page, is shown only when all 24 months are published consecutively, so a missing month never makes a longer window look like a rise.

District and force pages, and sector pages with enough records to be indexed, offer a CSV of the figures they show: the total for each of their 12 months and the count for each of their largest categories, for their own window, with the page's caveats as notes. Every row names the area, the months, the source and licence, and the page. The page also gives a citation to copy, with the months shown and the date you read it.

A district or council area page's map shows where the area's records in its 12 months were placed in the crime map's hexagons. It draws each hexagon that holds at least one of the area's live postcodes and has records in those months, darker for more records. It uses the detail-level hexagons when they would draw at least 10 px wide on a 320 px phone screen, and the overview-level hexagons otherwise. When even those would draw narrower, as for the largest rural council areas, the page shows no map, so no hexagon is small enough to read as a single point. Under the hexagons is an OpenStreetMap street map, paled so the hexagons stand out, that our server draws from cached map tiles at a zoom that keeps its labels readable on a phone. Until those tiles are cached, the map shows on a plain background. The page gives the hexagon size on the ground for its area. Hexagons at the edge also hold records from neighbouring areas, and the area's records placed outside these hexagons are not drawn, so the map's counts won't add up to the page's total. With fewer than 10 records in those hexagons there is no map. A month the police did not publish adds nothing to the map. Where part of a district is policed by a force that did not publish street-level records for some months, the map leaves out that part for those months, and says so under the map.

Postcode sector pages

A postcode sector is the district plus the first digit of the second half of a postcode, like E8 1. Sector pages use the same nearest-postcode assignment, so every sector record also counts towards its district. Sectors are small, so a few records near a sector edge can land in the neighbouring sector. Sectors with fewer than 50 published records in the last 12 months still have a page, but it is kept out of search results because its month-to-month figures are mostly noise.

Council area pages

Pages listed under crime by council area cover English and Welsh local authority districts: the area one district, borough, city or unitary council runs, such as the Chelmsford council area. A council area follows the council's boundary, which can differ from the town or city it is named after: Chelmsford's council area, for example, includes the villages around the city, and elsewhere part of a town can sit in a neighbouring council area. ONS files a few names inverted, such as "Bristol, City of"; these pages use the plain name, Bristol.

Each published record is assigned to its nearest postcode, in the same pass that assigns it to a postcode district and sector, and counts for that postcode's council area. The council code for each postcode comes from the ONS Postcode Directory, which places a postcode in the council area its centre falls in. A record whose nearest postcode has no council code is left out rather than moved to a farther postcode. Near a council boundary the assignment is indicative. Postcode districts and sectors can cross council boundaries, and their pages count records on both sides of the boundary. A council area page lists a district or sector, and a district page names a council area, only when at least 5% of that district's or sector's live postcodes are in the council area; terminated postcodes do not count. A district or sector page's title names the council area where most of its Census 2021 residents live, and a district page says "mostly" when more than half of them live in one council area; with no residents counted, or with two council areas holding equally many, both go by live postcodes. Neighbouring council areas are those that each hold at least 5% of the live postcodes in a shared postcode district.

A council area gets a page only when its own records pass the same volume and publication-gap rules as a postcode district, and only once every published month has been assigned to council areas from the current postcode directory. Loading a new postcode directory clears the council area figures, so no page mixes two releases; until every month is rebuilt, no council area page is shown. Council areas sit wholly inside one police force area, so a council area policed by a force that data.police.uk lists as publishing no street-level crime gets a short note instead of a page, kept out of search results and with no figures or rate, until that force has street crime loaded for each of the latest three months.

A council area page shows its months, top categories and map as a postcode district page does, described above. Each force that published records in the council area decides which of its months are hatched or striped.

Street-crime records per 1,000 residents

District, sector, council area, and force area pages show published street-crime records (including anti-social behaviour) for the area's last 12 published months, divided by the area's usual residents in Census 2021, multiplied by 1,000. District, sector, and council area pages compare that rate with their main force and with England and Wales. Force area pages compare with England and Wales.

Residents come from the ONS Census 2021 postcode headcounts for England and Wales (Nomis table P001). Each published record is assigned to its nearest postcode, so a sector or district population is the residents of exactly those postcodes. A council area's population is the residents of every postcode the ONS Postcode Directory places in that council area, the same postcodes its records are assigned through. The records and the residents therefore cover the same geography. We add these residents up ourselves, so a council area's total can differ slightly from the council's official Census 2021 population. A force area's population sums postcodes by their ONS police force area code. The England and Wales population is the table total.

Every rate counts only records from the 43 police forces of England and Wales, the forces the census covers. Records from British Transport Police still appear in an area's counts but are left out of its rate and of every comparison.

A rate is not shown when:

A force or England and Wales comparison is left out, with a note, unless every force it covers has published every month of the window. A force missing a month would otherwise count as zero while its residents still count.

Other limits:

England and Wales totals

The England and Wales page adds up the street-crime records of the 43 police forces of England and Wales over the site's last 12 months. British Transport Police and Northern Ireland are left out, as in every rate. A force with no records in our tables for a month is named against that month and adds nothing to it, and the page's title, description and first sentence then call the total incomplete and say what it lacks. Only a force that data.police.uk lists as not publishing is said not to have published; any other gap could be a month we have not loaded. The England and Wales rate is shown only when every force published every month, and the change on the year before only when every force published all 24 months. The page ranks the forces by the rate each force's own page shows. That table is rebuilt with the rankings, so it can lag the force pages until a rebuild succeeds.

Crime rate rankings

The rankings order postcode districts, and within each force postcode sectors, by published street-crime records per 1,000 residents, worked out as an area's own page works out its rate, over the 12 months each ranking states, with the records and residents beside every rate. They show the highest and the lowest published rates. They are not safety ratings. Rankings are rebuilt after each data update, and until a rebuild succeeds they can lag the area pages.

Each force area page also ranks the council areas inside that force, such as the London boroughs on the Metropolitan Police page, by the rate each council area's own page shows. The table is rebuilt with the rankings, so until a rebuild succeeds it can lag the council area pages. A council area whose page shows no rate is listed under the table without a rank. When fewer than two council areas have a rate, the page lists them without a ranking. A council area policed by a force that publishes no street-level crime, such as one of the Greater Manchester boroughs, has no page and so does not appear. The council area ranking reads the same stored council tables, so its rates are the council area pages' own: every council area in England and Wales, London's 33 councils, and each force's council areas. A council area whose page withholds its rate is listed under the table with its page's reason, and so is each council area with a note instead of a page because its force publishes no street-level crime, such as the Greater Manchester boroughs. A force area with only one council area rate shows that rate without a ranking. Each council area page also lists the postcode sectors and districts mostly inside it, those with more than half of their Census 2021 residents in the council area, at the rates the rankings give them, so under the same floor and rules, with the highest and lowest five of a long list. A part with no council area holding more than half its residents is listed on none. The list is rebuilt with the rankings and says on which day, so until a rebuild succeeds it can lag the area pages.

Deprivation where residents live

District and sector pages show how an area's Census 2021 residents spread across deprivation deciles. Each postcode takes the decile of its 2021 small area (LSOA) and counts its residents, so the figure is a share of residents, not of land. English areas use the English Indices of Deprivation 2025. Welsh areas use the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2025. An area that spans the border shows each nation separately, with each nation's share of the area's residents. Neighbourhood reports show the mix for their postcode's district when the district has a published page.

Area data on district pages and in Move reports

District pages carry an area section built from official open datasets, and Move reports carry the same datasets around the searched postcode: sold prices and flood bands for postcodes whose centroid lies within 0.5 km of the searched postcode's centroid, broadband for the searched postcode and the share of those nearby postcodes that can get each service, and up to eight of the nearest open schools within 2 km. School distances are straight-line distances between postcode centroids, not to school entrances, travel distances, or catchments. Each dataset is joined to the district through postcodes, so a figure covers the postcodes whose first half matches the district. A block is left out when its dataset has no rows for the area, and each block names the edition it was loaded from.

Open data and licensing

The policing data used by this service is published by the Home Office under the Open Government Licence v3.0. National comparison figures are derived from the same published dataset. District, sector, and council area pages use postcode centroids and council codes from the ONS Postcode Directory, and the centre of a postcode check or report is its postcode centroid from the same directory. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2026. Council area names come from the ONS Local Authority Districts names and codes list, under the same licence.

Resident counts come from Postcode resident and household estimates, England and Wales: Census 2021 (Nomis table P001). Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Deprivation deciles: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, English Indices of Deprivation 2025, and Welsh Government, Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2025, both under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Area data on district pages is used under the Open Government Licence v3.0:

For shorter answers to common questions, see the FAQ. Guides for buyers include how to check crime rates before buying a house and crime checks vs conveyancing searches. If you believe something on this page is inaccurate, please get in touch.